The North’s Economic Development Plan

aspareme:

racefortheironthrone:

(for previous parts in the series, see here)

Of all of the regions of Westeros we’ve planned for, the North is perhaps the most difficult case we’ve deal with, next to Dorne (which had a much better export profile).

As the Lord of Winterfell, my main difficulties are that the North is severely underpopulated, and has extreme weather conditions that exacerbate the northerly climate’s limits on agricultural productivity.

So how do we overcome these problems…ideally, before winter comes?

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This is brilliant–the idea of a canal system to connect the North is one I hadn’t considered, but it works.

Though–how would that be affected by the North’s sub-Arctic climate? Would a canal system be completed in the course of a summer?

The horse-breeding and emphasis on cavalry does make sense, though. You could also establish a policy of relative political isolationism–not totally, because trade will still be a necessity, but at the very least a policy of “don’t start none won’t be none” with the southern kingdoms, and then hold the line at the Neck.

Train your citizenry in what essentially amounts to guerrilla warfare, sort of like House Reed’s strike-and-disappear strategy, and you’d avoid the the Riverland’s’ problem of a helpless peasantry.

With the exception of the sections immediately adjacent to the existing rivers, digging a canal is basically digging a giant trench – it’s easier to do that during the summer, but you’re not limited to the summer.

Now, one major drawback to a Northern canal is that it’s going to ice over in the winter – which is when you’d need to bring in the sleds – so a lot depends on the level of competition. If a Manderly-Blackwater or Blue Fork canal are active, the economic impact of a canal in the North is going to be severely hampered.

In canals, tho, there’s a huge first-mover advantage. The Erie Canal wasn’t the shortest canal to the west, but because it was up and running before anyone else, it easily beat the pants off the competition, even after the arrival of the railroad potentially made it obsolete.

Hi, I love your economic development series! One thing that stuck out to me was the need for immigration in the north. The northerners just plain need more people to produce enough to be self sufficient AND trade competitive. Framing my question in a Post Dream/Post Second-Long-Night scenario, where the north as hit hardest but the south is also devastated, how would you (or Sansa Queen Of The North) repopulate the North? I assume some outreach to Essos would be necessary

I’ve talked about this a bit in my Northern economic development plan, but the foundation of any Northern immigration plan is going to have to be something akin to the German princes offering vacant land for free (as well as tax exemptions and other privileges) to anyone willing to settle in their lands after the Thirty Years War had depopulated entire regions.

We’re already starting to see that a little bit with the 100,000 willdings who just arrived, growing the North’s population by 2.5%, getting settled on the Gift. But, given its extremely low population density, the North is full of Gifts yet ungifted.

In terms of where these people would come from, you’re going to want people who are already familiar with agriculture and livestock herding, so I would concentrate on the younger sons of landholding yeomen who aren’t going to inherit the family farm, as well as any and all peasants who don’t hold land (your crofters, your cotters, your sharecroppers, etc.). In so far as the North is also looking to industrialize, I would target journeymen and apprentices from the textiles industries of Myr, Tyrosh, Norvos, etc.

Anonymous asked: How long would it take to raise a city of comparable size to White Harbor and its fortifications on the river that passes through the Rills? I meant the one that leads to Torrhen’s Square, but I’m interested to know whether you think another river would be a better candidate.

Ok, now that I know what you’re getting at, I feel like I can answer that question.

Torrhen’s Square is a good location for a city – you’re building on top of an already-existing settlement with good defenses, the lake offers quite a bit of space for docks, you’ve got direct access to the Saltspear, Blazewater Bay, and the Sunset Sea, and its location nearby to the Wolfswood gives it a natural monopoly on Northern timber exports.

The biggest potential problem I see for Torrhen’s Square’s economic development is that it’s right by Barrowton, which is already a town with a strong economic presence (I’m pretty sure it’s a major livestock market, with sheep, cattle, and horses on offer), and has a shorter route to the Saltspear and thus foreign markets. So if the Dustins decide to make it a competition, Torrhen’s Square would be decidedly the underdog.

As for how long…well, King’s Landing took only 25 years to go from nothing to bigger than White Harbor, so it all depends on what level of investments go into it:

Sawmills, timber yards, carpenters, etc. – the necessary foundation for an economy, as proximity to the wolfswood is TS’ main value added. And this is going to take some significant up-front investments, because sawmills and the like are not cheap.
A Northern canal – would turbo-charge TS’ economic development, similar to how the Erie Canal changed upstate New York from a rural backwater into an industrial hotbed – depending on competition from other canals. Both Torrhen’s Square and White Harbor would grow significantly, with White Harbor gaining new western markets for its wool and its silver, and Torrhen’s Square gaining new eastern markets for its timber and woodcrafts, as well as the added revenue from providing commercial services to the passing trade.
A Stark navy-yard – given the proximity to essentially unlimited timber, if the North wants a navy on its west coast again, and it desperately needs one, putting a navy-yard and naval base on Torrhen’s Square makes a ton of sense. The raw materials are right there, the lake allows you to have a lot of ships in construction or moored up in one place, the distance from the coast makes it very hard for Ironborn to burn your fleet at anchor, etc. And it would provide a baseline of demand for a shipbuilding industry to develop, and you’re going to need one of them if you want to capture the maximum value-added from Northern exports and generate additional economic growth you’ll need to pay for all of this.

Would a hypothetical post-WftD regress back into feudal Kingdoms (divided into their historical boundaries, but leaving a wide-berth around smoking ruin KL and Oldtown respectively) affect your EDPs? Obviously some changes will have to be made, but can the Kings trade and build industry as effectively as their Lord Paramount predecessors?

The answer is, it kind of depends on what kind of damage the War for the Dawn does. If there’s a massive loss of life, you potentially can have a negative population spiral, because 90%+ of the population are also your primary food producers – lower population means lower production, which means less food available so birth-rates decline, and the spiral continues.

On the other hand, when you have a massive loss of life, you do get a huge increase in per-capita material living standards. As we saw with the Black Death, epidemic diseases kill lots of people, but they leave the land, the houses, improvements, and other non-perishable property intact, and now it’s spread over a smaller population. There’s some scholars who argue that one of the catalysts for the Industrial Revolution was the increase in surplus capital from the Black Death.

In terms of how the political changes might change things…

On the one hand, you now have much more flexibility within your own polity: you have your own coinage so you can set monetary policy, you have your own taxation system so you can set fiscal policy. So if there are institutional barrier at the kingdom-wide level to certain economic development, than potentially moving back to the Seven Kingdoms could ease the way for that.

On the other hand, you now have the added difficulty of international commerce within what was once a single polity: seven kingdoms means seven currencies, which means you have foreign exchange issues; it also means that you need to work out trade deals with the other kingdoms in order to be able to sell your goods outside of your own patch. And of course, any kind of economic development that crosses borders is now made a lot more complicated.

Not sure if you’ve been asked this before, but: How realistic is it that there was no substantial city at the mouth of the Blackwater before Aegon’s conquest? It’s the best natural harbor on the continent, at the mouth of a significant river, in a fertile area, and more conveniently located for intercontinental trade than Oldtown or Lannisport.

So a couple things:

1. Technically speaking, King’s Landing isn’t a harbor. A harbor is a deep body of water along the coast that ships can dock at, that’s protected from the winds and waves. King’s Landing is a riverrine port, with its docks in the Blackwater Rush, as opposed to out on the bay itself. (Compare the geography of King’s Landing to say, Volantis or Braavos)

2. According to WOIAF, it seems largely due to political disunity: “in the days of the Hundred Kingdoms, many petty kings had claimed dominion over the river mouth, amongst them the Darklyn kings of Duskendale, the Masseys of Stonedance, and the river kings of old…Towers and forts had crowned the three hills at various times, only to be thrown down in one war or another. Now only broken stones and overgrown ruins remained.” As a result of war, therefore, King’s Landing remained undeveloped and you didn’t get enough of a concentration of people necessary to attract trade.